The present invention relates to a method of manufacturing fancy foods composed of sheets of fish meal principally comprising fish meat and cheese.
Kneaded and dried food principally formed of a material of fish meat such as cod comprise materials which are relatively inexpensive and easily caught and have been more frequently used recently. The said products have been utilized for many kinds of delicate and fancy foods as well as dressed cuttlefish and similar products. On the other hand, cheese contains a large quantity of proteins, fats, vitamins, etc. and has been extensively eaten even by Japanese people as well as Europeans and Americans as nutritious food of fine flavor.
As examples of foods wherein the flavor of flattened cuttlefish and the flavor of cheese are well harmonized, attention is directed to the inventions described in Japanese Patent Publication No. 48-2336, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 54-113464, etc. However, in these inventions, when cheese is sandwiched between the flattened cuttlefishes and they are pressed and heated while being put between heat resisting iron plates, they are pressed for about five minutes and heated at a temperature of 120.degree. to 180.degree. C. This condition of heating is a high temperature heating above a melting temperature (90.degree. for process cheese) of the cheese itself which is sandwiched between the flattened cuttlefishes. Under such temperature conditions, the cheese is melted out and most probably, the desired products may not be obtained. Further, the flattened cuttlefish itself is dried by high temperature heating, and therefore the product itself is felt to be hard, and its desirable properties deteriorated. On the other hand, an invention of sandwich-like products in which cheese is sandwiched between fish meat kneaded products is disclosed in Japanese Utility Model Application Laid-Open No. 57-117993. In this case, a dried product formed of a raw material of the minched flesh of fish is coated with a paste-like adhesive material in which a sorbital containing liquid and a natural polysaccharide aqueous solution are mixed, and thereafter a slice of cheese is sandwiched therebetween. This product has suffered from the disadvantages in that desirability of the fish meat kneaded product and cheese is impaired by the interposition of said paste-like adhesive material. Moreover, these conventional inventions use cheese materials which are pure dairy products that get moldy easily, and lack preservative properties.